A Life Uncommon
by aliceroosevelt
Summary: She wanted surcease. He only wanted her.


A Life Uncommon

by aliceroosevelt

Pairing: S/B

Rating: R

Fill your lives with love and bravery

And you shall lead a life uncommon–Jewel

Book One: Chapter 1

"That's everything. I think," Dawn grunted, heroically trying to slam the trunk on five bulging suitcases, several plastic crates, and assorted piles of junk. When that didn't work, she made a kind of running jump and tried to batter it closed with her body.

Buffy would have helped, but Dawn's versus the luggage was fascinating to watch, like an interpretive dance. Girl Floundering On Car. "Sweetie, there _are_ stores in LA. In which you can buy things." She got a little misty. "Lots and lots of stores."

Dawn stuck her tongue out, a little girl again when the light hit just right. "Jerk. The memory of shoes moves you more than my rose-like transformation from child to woman."

"Oh, you're not there yet," Buffy snickered. Reaching into the overflowing car, she pulled out a tatty stuffed dog with ragged ears and a vaguely traumatized look in its button eyes. Like it hadn't quite gotten over life with Dawn during the hormonal Armageddon of her puberty. Buffy could empathize.

"Hey," Dawn snatched the toy and hugged it close. "Don't hate on Pollicle Dog. He's my emotional anchor." Her eyes gleamed evilly. "And, speaking of retarded growth, you look _very_ adult watching cartoons with Spike."

Buffy flushed. "I'm keeping him out of trouble."

"Uh-huh. Because the living room is rife with temptation. The only crimes he commits these days are against good taste, fashion, and the English language."

"Not true," Buffy protested. "He still steals on a semi-regular basis." For some bizarre reason, she felt compelled to defend the badness of Spike. To put the brakes on all this change.

"Only because you haven't come up with a good enough threat. He's not exactly Commandment boy, so flapping the bible in his face was kind of ineffective."

Buffy sighed. Her biblical rehabilitation had inspired him to use the psalms for cigarette paper. And what remained of the good book had then migrated under a tippy end table "What will I do without you to help me with Vamp Housebreaking 101?"

"Oh, please." Dawn tossed Pollicle Dog under the passenger seat. "Spike loves you. He'd do anything for you, short of taking holy orders."

Buffy snickered. "_That_ would revolutionize the church."

Dawn frowned. "Shut up. I'm making a big, important point, here."

"Fine." Buffy waited in dread for whatever insight Dawn was about to impart, torn between shoving her sister into the car and just running away. She'd never liked being lectured about herself. And Dawn, once she'd passed the storms and tantrums of sixteen, had this strange maturity. An uncanny way of cutting through the red tape of the relationships that swirled around her and proceeding straight to the scene of the crime.

"I know you're afraid," she began, and Buffy knew she wasn't taking about the bathroom incident, which had, long ago, ceased to be the biggest issue between Spike and Dawn. Hero worship could be a terrible thing, and Spike's fall from grace that summer was particularly brutal. In Dawn's eyes, it was more of a running sky dive onto hot pavement studded with crosses. But, sometime before the big battle under Sunnydale High, they'd worked their way back to civility, even affection. And afterward, there was a newfound respect that Buffy sometimes envied, a bond between survivors that could be traced back to the summer of her second death, when they were all in all to each other.

The seed of that friendship wasn't dead, just frosted over by pain and misunderstanding. The perils of growing up.

Dawn squeezed her hand. "I understand, really. The first time around, you guys were just a big ball of sexed-up wrong. But it's been three years, and he practically lives on our couch. Don't try to deny it, either. There's a Cheeto colony under there and he's, like, their founding father."

Buffy made a mental note: eject snacking vampire and vacuum. Ignore all protests that said vampire can't hear _Smallville._

Dawn went on, ticking off points on her fingers. "The Hellmouth hasn't hiccupped in forever. But you still patrol together every night. For _hours."_

Buffy pouted. "Can't a girl be thorough?"__

"Be quiet. I'm almost to the dramatic conclusion." She gripped Buffy's shoulders, tensing in the manner of one about to rip aside a curtain and reveal the forbidden. "Buffy Summers_. _You. Are. Dating_._ Spike."

Oh, no. God, no.

But sort of...yeah. In a weird, repressed, non-verbal way, she was. Looking for things to kill together was the Sunnydale equivalent of dancing till dawn.__

Dawn lightly patted her face. "Buffy? Don't go all grand mal on me, okay?"__

"I'm okay, Dawnie. Seizure-free Buffy." She gripped her sister's wrist."You know it's complicated, right? The..thing...between Spike and me?"__

"Well, duh." Patented Dawn eye-roll. "I was there for the whole sex revelation, axe-wielding Xander bit, remember? Not to mention the insano, 'oops, I killed people' era."__

"Right. Sorry," Buffy apologized, making another mental note: little sister witnessed fiasco. "But it goes a lot deeper than that. There's something I never told you about that day in the Hellmouth."

"When the school collapsed and made uber-vamp pancakes?"

"Yeah." Buffy hesitated. Dawn was eighteen and old enough to understand, but something in Buffy's nature still screamed and railed at revealing something so intimate. A private hurt she'd nursed for years. "Before I tore that horrible amulet off of Spike, we both thought he was going to die." And he almost had, all that beautiful, pale skin burning and emitting a noxious vapor that hung in the air like smoke. She was sure he'd go to dust in her arms. "I told him I loved him." Buffy's voice cracked, to her dismay. "He didn't believe me."

Dawn's mouth fell open. "No!"

Buffy nodded miserably. "Yes. And after he came out flame-broiled, but intact, we never mentioned it again."

"Holy Hecate! Why not?" Dawn sputtered. "He probably thinks he was right! That it was some kind of last ditch effort to save him from super-fiery undeath." Her eyes widened. "Was it?"

"No!" Buffy's face grew warm, and she could almost touch the memory of that day. Her small, reluctant army. The death of Anya. Hands and heat and _him, _her old enemy and dear friend. The fiercely protective instincts of that last year rearing up like wild horses when the fire tried to consume what death had left forever young. "No, I meant it. But things have been good between us since then. There's been, like, zero hitting. And minimal name-calling. I don't want to rock the boat." Because drowning is not my thing, she almost added. And the last time I used him as a life preserver he wound up crazy and half-broken in a basement.

"Oh, my God," Dawn breathed. "You are both so clueless. The special Olympians of dumb."

"Huh?" Buffy was both confused and offended.

Dawn reached over and rapped sharply on Buffy's head. "Is there any staff in the brains department, Buff? Spike looks at you like he's a hungry puppy and you're tasty, chewy bacon. Wake up and smell the unresolved issues." She began pulling things out of the car. "I'm going to stay and help you fix this."

"No, you're not." Buffy heaved the pile of bedding back into the depths of the backseat. "You're going to get in the car."

"But--"

"No buts. Unless they're attached to the football team and really worth checking out. You're going to drive to LA, check into the dorm, and apologize to your roommate for bringing so much crap. The poor thing won't even have room to squat with a bowl amongst the drifts." Turning Dawn by the shoulders, she pushed her into the driver's seat. "This is your time. Don't worry about me."

A look of panic crossed Dawn's face. "What if I hate college? What if college hates me?"

"Then you'll come home and do something else." Buffy patted Dawn's shiny brown hair soothingly.

"What?" Dawn sniffled.

Buffy shrugged. "I don't know. But, hey, Double Meat is double sweet."

Dawn barked out a laugh, and her eyes lost some of their terrified glassiness. "Bitch."

"Brat," Buffy returned cheerfully.

"I love you, you know."

Buffy was not going to cry. She wasn't. "I love you more. Even if you do meddle in my love life."

"_Potential _love life," Dawn corrected, grasping Buffy's arm through the open window. "Before I go, promise me you'll shit or get off the pot."

"Dawn Summers, that's disgusting!"

"I learned it from Spike." Dawn started the engine. "Along with how to jimmy a lock, steal cable, and say 'I'm going to kick your balls up your windpipe' in Cantonese.'"

Buffy grimaced. Her baby sister could effectively threaten an oriental and abscond with his television service. Fabulous. "Every girl needs a corrupting influence, I guess. "

Dawn laughed. "Give him a hug for me." Her eyes scanned the street. "I thought for sure he'd risk immolation to say goodbye."

"Yeah. It's a little weird. Flaming jaunts are Spike's thing."A finger of worry began to twist in the region of her heart, but Buffy dismissed the fear almost as quickly as it came. She was fussing. It was a habit that began after Africa, when everyone and everything in the world seemed dead set against his survival. She'd been in that same dark place the year before. Struggling in a vortex of needs and compulsions she didn't understand. And Spike had grounded her through the changes. Absorbed her self-hatred, accepted her fists. Let her ride him, hip to hip, until the sweat ran down her body like a benediction and nothing existed but sensory overload and the seawater scent of sex. The way he pretended to be defenseless under her, a shadow play of sharp angles and skeletal wrists. A toxic gift, but a gift nonetheless.

She wanted surcease. He only wanted her.

"I'll call you everyday." Dawn's voice drew Buffy back from her thoughts.

"You'd better. Or I'll come cook for all your friends."

Dawn pretended to gag. "I want to graduate, not be violently crushed in a chuckbucket stampede." With a final wave, she pulled away from the curb.

"Study hard," Buffy couldn't resist calling after her. "Sleep occasionally. And stay off the astral plane!"

Dawn tooted the horn all the way to the corner. Buffy stood on the curb for a long time after she disappeared, both elated and strangely let down. Dawn had been her purpose for so long. Even more so after the Hellmouth stopped barfing up evil.

With the school acting like a massive cork, nothing crawled out of it anymore except ants, and even the demons had stopped coming. Sunnydale was more of a demon tourist attraction than the Mecca it once was. Every few days, a busload of Fyarl rolled through, sure they'd taken a wrong turn at Santa Barbara, or a furry little family pulled up. But they almost always moved on to LA or Cleveland, obviously disappointed by the lack of hot, bubbly evil. The vampires were still there, but they kept a low profile, living in the crumbling mansions at the edge of town and hiding their kills _very _well, if they killed at all.

She almost missed the old days, when survival was a daily struggle and the apocalypse came every year.

Almost.

TBC


End file.
